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After the Civil War
(1865-1870)
 Changes in Farming

Changes in Farming
Reading Level
     edHelper's suggested reading level:   high interest, readability grades 4 to 6
     Flesch-Kincaid grade level:   3.88

Vocabulary
     challenging words:    replanted, sharecropper, rent, payment, tobacco, jobs, earn, poverty, order, country, working, owner, former, longer, plantation, become
     content words:    Civil War

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Changes in Farming
By Cathy Pearl 		  
1     After the Civil War, farming in this country changed. There were no longer slaves to pick crops or work on the farms. Much of the South had been destroyed by the war. This part of the country would have to start over again.
 
2     The war left many of the plantations ruined. But this wouldn't last forever. Crops could be replanted. Buildings could be rebuilt. Many planters had held on to their land. Others worked their way out of debt and gained their land back.
 
3     But the main question most planters worried about was who would work the land. People did not want to stand in the hot sun and pick cotton. Workers would start the job. Then they would disappear to find better jobs that paid more.
 
4     Working on a plantation did not pay a lot of money. A person working on the railroad could earn $1.75 a day. Working on the plantation might only pay fifty cents a day. Women who worked in the fields were paid even less.
 
5     There were many former slaves who needed work. They could not afford to buy their own land. Many of the plantations now needed these workers back. Because of these needs, farming changed in the South.

Paragraphs 6 to 13:
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